John Boal Photography

About a month ago I went to Santa Fe, NM to attend the Photographic Workshops there. I took a Multimedia Storytelling class taught by Ami Vitale ( www.amivitale.com ). By the end of a hectic week I produced a piece, with my partner, Laura Feged, about Cerrillos, NM, told by a 94 year-old woman who was born and raised there. Click here to watch it on Vimeo The music in the piece, "Origami", is from Jake Schepps ( www.jakeschepps.com ). Please visit his website. He was totally generous in allowing us to use his music. He also plays for the Expedition Quartet. Mary was an incredible person to interview. As you might imagine, there is a bit of concern in driving to a dusty old town 30 minutes away to photograph and interview a 94 year-old woman whom I’d never met. What if she wasn’t interested? After all, she must be tired of talking to visitors and other Santa Fe Workshop folks who’ve drifted into and out of town every so often. But Laura and I walked into Mary’s Bar, and the...

I really wanted to write a blog about my experience in Santa Fe at the end of February. I really did. But because of some unforseen circumstances that blog will wait 'til later. Suffice it to say, I had a great time, took a great class with Ami Vitale, and learned a bunch about myself and multimedia storytelling. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I'll be able to post our story and talk a lot more about it. But this blog is about hoopsfest. Josh Himan graduated from college. And then he decided to join the Marines. As an enlisted. He was part of the surge in Helmand province, and eventually an IED detonated underneath his Humvee. He is paralyzed below the waist and partially in one hand. He's been working hard to get home, and I had a chance to spend 1 day at Walter Reed with him. Then, a few weeks later, the paper I work for, The News & Messenger, held Hoopsfest. The event is a 3-point contest, 2-ball competition (2 players, time limit, score from various points on...

Today I finally have the chance to show you a pretty remarkable kid I met 18 months ago. Click here for the link to my project. Read further if you’d like to hear more about Ricky, his family, and my take on the whole experience. Ricky Chang, a local Manassas kid broke his neck riding his bike with his friends a month after his high school graduation. He was performing tricks, much like what you see on X-games and MTV. Performing 360s off stairways, riding railings on the pegs of their wheels. He and his friends are really talented. Check out some videos of them online. James Lukas Ricky And a Powerbike shop promo (with Ricky, James and others in it) Unfortunately for Ricky, one trick went a little wrong, and he landed awkwardly, breaking his neck, becoming a quadriplegic. Just like that, his life (and his family’s) was changed forever. Ricky could not breath, eat or drink on his own. His situation appeared grim. This was in July of 2008. I met him in November 2009. Through a t...

I love Facebook. I love that someone can randomly send you a note asking if you can shoot this or shoot that. And out of the blue, you have a job. I recently reconnected with a high school soccer teammate of mine. We soon discovered we were similar in a lot of ways. We both studied the life sciences at George Mason and came away with degrees. We are also in various stages of leaving those days behind us. He is an aspiring filmmaker with a full-time job at a large company, and I made the jump to photography 5 years ago. So he recently asked if I could do some portraits for him to use on his website to help promote his filmmaking and production company. I was more than happy to do so. He had some good ideas to begin with, which always makes taking pictures more fun. You know you're working with someone visual, so we can each bounce ideas off each other and see what sticks. So if you have a chance, check up on Lewis Long III ( his last film in 2008 was "Good People "), a...

Saturday was a windy day. The kind of windy day where someone waves you to the side of the road to see if you could drive them to the top of the hill so they don't have to walk in the wind (this happened). It's was also the kind of windy day that blows trees into power lines. These start fires. Once these fires start, they aren't readily stopped because....you guessed it...the wind. I-95 looking northward Looking southward at I-95 before they closed the lanes A couple of dozen acres went up in flames because of an incorrectly disposed trash fire in a homeless camp. This led to the closure of I-95 southbound for a period of time because the wind fueled the fires and carried the smoke across the highway, reducing visibility. A brush fire 15 miles away from there demolished at least one home and closed multiple roads. Finally, I saw another fire as I was on my way home. Not sure what started that one, but trees were on fire and as twilight drifted into night, it made for some ...

I've been busy lately. Very busy. Between putting together a project I've been working on for about 18 months, and all of the end of the year contest entries, I've hardly had a moment to comment on this blog. I've also been learning about HDSLR. Yes, the newest fandangled toy of the photographer. I've had a Canon 7D for about a year and a half (not coincidentally, it is about the same time I've been working on my aforementioned project). There are a lot of neat things about the idea of shooting video. But I have to go back to when the idea of video and newspapers first came about...at least from my perspective. I can remember when I was interning at The Potomac News and The York Dispatch. There were these occasional vague calls for using video to "enhance" our coverage of events and stories. Mostly these calls for "more video, please...", came from above and not from other photographers. At that time, about 5 years ago, the calls for m...

So the year has finally drawn to a close. Happy belated New Year! Many things have happened since January. I think every piece of equipment I own needed replacing or fixing in 2010. So I can't exactly say I'm sad to see the new year arrive. As for the pictures, I've seen and done many things this year, attempting to take pictures the entire way. Here are some of my favorites...and what I learned... an SUV is your friend during Snowzilla... and keep looking for something different, you might find it... Sometimes when you go to an event, you have to decide to do things differently. I decided I would actually talk to the Iwo Jima Vets, and take good pictures of them, not pictures of them sitting and watching a podium: http://media.gatewayva.com/isn/slideshow/IWO_JIMA_022610/publish_to_web/indepix.htm Strobist.com is your friend...and on the 20th try, the idea might work... I can't get too upset when pictures like this don't run, and instead they run a submitted snap...